Climate change is real, ongoing, and a threat to every living thing on the planet. Founded in Vermont but now based in California, 350.org has brought Vermont leadership to the greatest challenge of our age.

This thirty-year-old organization of farmers and families thinks that a good food system is one that maximizes the health and happiness of everyone involved, and gives farmers a voice to make that happen.

Election Integrity

Vermont has few official ethics organizations, but the Secretary of State and their office serve as an enforcer of rules and regulations on public officials. SecState also tallies, records, and publishes votes across the state.

Energy Independence

Part of the state’s executive branch, the DPS has a mandate “to represent the public interest in matters regarding energy, telecommunications, water, and wastewater.” As part of those duties, they maintain a full list of electric utilities which was being updated at the time of this writing.

Education

The building blocks of a community and a nation are well-educated citizens. The Agency of Education takes on that complex task to make the next generation of Vermonters as well-informed as they can be, and provides contact information for students and parents to be involved. They have directories of:

Local politics should come first and be accessible. The VLCT provides representation and organization for the villages, towns, and cities of Vermont. Their list of members can be found in the link above, and a spreadsheet of contact information for all Vermont municipalities can be found here.

Realizing that homelessness is a problem with a solution, VCEH brings together communities to help the least fortunate amongst them.

Surveillance-Free Citizenry

Rights to privacy

The violations of Internet privacy that were revealed by Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald are a product of American national policy, not Vermont’s government. As far as we know, the state of Vermont has no such surveillance programs.